It’s called work. I’m involved in a project that, while not the most taxing in the world, does gobble up my free time in the very early mornings and later evenings, as well as another ongoing project that I’m still not settled into, and that is taking up a bit more mental space than I thought – once I do settle, I’m hoping I can spend about 15 minutes a day on it over the next few months. But I need to get this Other Thing done first – and the final deadline for the last section of that is in early March, so….

Brain is in Occupied Mode for the moment.

But a few notes, completely random, but mostly reading-related.

What am I reading? I realized with dismay that it had been a while since I had actually finished reading a book. I discovered a Trollope that was left hanging, and then The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers that I got 2/3 through and then there’s that Vietnamese priest book I started a few weeks back. Seriously, one of my Lent disciplines is to begin reading books and finish them.

What I have finished, though, are books “for school.” I had my 13-year old read The Lord of the Flies and read it along with him – a book as fascinating and depressing as it always is. Having recently finished watching Lost, we were both struck by some parallels and, we suspect, inspirations for the series in the book.

The very brief passage that struck me with the most force comes at the very end (spoiler alert!) in the scene in which the children are discovered by the British naval personnel. If you recall, the major conflict in the book has been between Ralph, the boy who attempts to hold on to civilization for as long as possible, and Jack, the leader of the choir boys who battles to assume leadership on the island, driven by a hunter’s bloodlust. Jack, through most of the book, is painted as a powerful, almost mythic figure. All the other boys come under is power and, as the book rushes to an end, Ralph is racing for his life from Jack and those under his sway.

But then at the very end, the point of view shifts, and we see the entire situation from the perspective of the newly-arrived adult. He asks who had been leading the boys. Ralph quickly says that he was. And then:

A little boy who wore the remains of an extraordinary black cap on hisred hair and who carried the remains of a pair of spectacles at his waist,started forward, then changed his mind and stood still.

I have read that sentence over and over, trying to absorb the power of the shift in point of view and what it tells us about what’s real, what we think is real, and what’s really real.

The next “school novel” is on a somewhat lighter vein – he suggest Murder on the Orient Express, and I had no problem with it. He started it today, so the “school” part of the reading involved an introduction to the genre of detective fiction (which interests him because he’s just started watching Sherlock), Agatha Christie’s life, and then some history and geography inspired by the first three chapters of the book – here’s an excellent page of chapter-by-chapter annotations, and really, take a look. When a kid reads Murder on the Orient Express and goes on all the rabbit trails inspired by it, look at what he can explore: the geography of the Near East, as well as the area covered by the train route, as well as the history of the period in that area – a time in places like Aleppo and Kirkuk very different from our own.

Short story read on Monday: “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” – by Stephen Crane. Emphasis on the humor in the story as well as the story as a metaphor for the changes then occurring in the West.

Poems read over the past couple of weeks:

“Do not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

“13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

“The Lake Isle of Innisfreee”

“The World is Too Much With Us”

“Miniver Cheevy”

“Fern Hill”

For his own, individual reading, he’s tearing through Dune. I gave him the first volume for Christmas, he read it, then read Children of Dune over a couple of days (it’s much shorter than the first) and is about to start Dune Messiah.

Older brother has just started The Great Gatsby for school, so I’m reading that, too – can I admit that this is the first time for me?

Guys, I went to high school in the 70’s. We read Jonathan Livingston Seagull for religion class, for pete’s sake.

In case you think this business of “Mom reading along with school assignments” is weird and just too helicoptery for words, please consider:

I like to read and talk about books. It’s what I do.

Talking about books together is a good thing. Talk about books with your spouse, your friends, your kids, your book group, strangers on a plane – it’s all good, it expands your brain and your experience a little bit, every time.

Go see The Commuter – the latest Liam Neeson-as-unlikely-hero film. Okay, forget I said that. Don’t go see it because it’s just barely okay, but it has a sweet – and actually crucial – plot point related to Neeeson and his high school son’s school reading assignments.

So yeah, maybe if you read along with your kids’ reading assignments, you too can be a hero on a commuter train….

Let’s report. Because there’s just too damn much else going on demanding reaction and commentary. Who the heck can keep up? It’s probably good in the long run. Keeps some of us off our high horses, minimizes the temptation to virtue-signal, and refocuses us back where we can actually have an impact – on our own daily lives.

Last Saturday, the older one had to work early and for most of the day. In the morning, the younger one and I headed over to Samford for a “Masquerade” recital where he played the Rach 3 in C# minor. The famous one, you know. His costume? We bought a pack of “hello my name is” stickers and he plastered his shirt with them – everyone from Spiro Agnew to Taylor Swift. Not sure what that was all about.

Anyway, here are some photos from the fossil hunt – I posted one a few days ago. It was sponsored by a local group geared at getting kids and families outside – Michael’s been to a couple of their camps in the past. They have two fossil hunts a year at this site – the fossils are mostly plant based, and are quite fascinating to find – once you figure out how to look. The first step is to look for black blotches on rocks – it’s a sign of carbon detritus, and carbon = life.

Here’s a find from the late-night homeschool “planning” sessions: History Bombs, which seems to be British. It’s mostly a pay site, but there are a few free videos, which are fun and, it seems, mostly accurate.

Speaking of accuracy, or the lack of it – if you are familiar with the world of educational videos, you’ve probably heard of Crash Course videos. I find them irritating and smug so I don’t use them, but a lot of people do – but just fyi, here’s a useful and brief critique of the Crash Course video on the “first Thanksgiving” – it’s a good reminder to be wary of most popular history…everything gets diluted down and mythology is uncritically passed on….

Speaking of history, this week’s In Our Time was on the Congress of Vienna. Quite absorbing and clarifying. I was particularly taken with the presence, energy and wit of one scholar, Tim Blanning, whom I subsequently looked up and found to be the author of several interesting books, including this one, which I think I’ll check out of the library tomorrow and probably never finish, but you know…I’ll have tried.

— 7 —

Currently reading:

Several short stories that my older son had to read for school – 19th century American realism. Crane, Chopin, London – you know the drill. I hadn’t read any of them, I’m ashamed to say, except for “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” I think my favorite was Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism.” Irony upon irony: the fellow who didn’t think for a moment he could be a hero actually did something heroic, but his motivations were anything but heroic anyway – rooted more in pride and fear of his fellows’ contempt than anything else. It says much about the muck and ambiguity of human conflict of all kinds.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with the 12-year old. He read The Old Man and the Sea last week. (This is “school” reading – he has bunches of books and graphic novels he reads for pleasure on his own).

Officers and Gentlemen by Waugh – the second in the Men at Arms trilogy. As I mentioned previously, I had, for some reason, thought it would be battle or strategy focused, so I’d not been interested, but as I’ve discovered, it’s just Waugh – centered on eviscerating human folly and yearning, in just another setting. Favorite sentence:

Her features were regular as marble and her eyes wide and splendid and mad.

It’s part of a brilliant and insane chapter of a bizarre dinner at the home of a faded Scottish aristocrat on an pile of rock called the Isle of Mugg….you had to be there…

Other than that, life is writing – I’m on track to finish writing the book due on 12/15 by 11/1. Yup. Super proud of myself, although perhaps I won’t be once the editors read what I’ve produced and said, Er…um…. But it’s good that I obeyed my instinct to be uncharacteristically efficient, because another project has come my way that’s going to take a lot of time between now and the spring. Which is good!

I’ve knocked a couple over the past few days, two books of very different genres, but both absorbing in their own way.

And I’m telling you – settling into a book is far less anxiety-producing than settling into social media news opining for the evening. Or even for fifteen minutes. Even if it’s a book about death. Weird.

But try it. It doesn’t make you a bad citizen, I promise.

I have written about Dorothy Hughes before. She is known today to the extent she is known at all, for pulp/crime novels. I initially came across her work via the NYRB reprints line – they have published The Expendable Man, which I wrote about here – and still highly recommend. A while later, I read her most well-known book, In a Lonely Place, made into a movie with Humphrey Bogart, and which I wrote about here.

So, what do we have so far? In the first, a physician falsely accused of a crime. In the second, we’re in the narrative point of view (in the third person) of a probable serial killer. In the third Hughes I’ve read – Ride the Pink Horse, we’re in the head of a still different type of character: a small-time operator and borderline criminal who’s been a part of the circle of a corrupt Illinois senator and who’s trying to settle a score of sorts – or to simply get what he believe is owed him.

What adds another level of interest and meaning to Ride the Pink Horse is the setting. Sailor – for that is his name – has followed the senator down to Santa Fe for the Fiesta that takes place over Labor Day weekend. Fiesta provides a fascinating background to the story, a background that reflects a changing understanding of America, insight into the Southwest and, most importantly, a glimpse into a greater, even transcendent reality that pricks at Sailor’s conscience.

The Fiesta begins with the burning of a huge effigy of evil – Zozobra.

On the hill the outsiders played at Fiesta with their fancy Baile but Fiesta was here. In the brown faces and the white faces, the young and the old; capering together, forgetting defeat and despair, and the weariness of the long, heavy days which were to come before the feast time would come again. This was Fiesta. The last moments of the beautiful and the gay and the good; when evil, the destroyer, had been himself destroyed by flame. This was the richness of life for those who could destroy evil; who could for three days create a world without hatred and greed and prejudice, without malice and cruelty and rain to spoil the fun. It was not three days in which to remember that evil would after three days rise again; for the days of Fiesta there was no evil in this Fiesta world. And so they danced.

Sailor is an outsider to this world, and so it’s a convenient way for Hughes to explore the noir trope of alienation, particularly in that post-World War II era.

And standing there the unease came upon him again. The unease of an alien land, of darkness and silence, of strange tongues and a stranger people, of unfamiliar smells, even the cool-of-night smell unfamiliar. What sucked into his pores for that moment was panic although he could not have put a name to it. The panic of loneness; of himself the stranger although he was himself unchanged, the creeping loss of identity. It sucked into his pores and it oozed out again, clammy in the chill of night. He was shivering as he stood there and he moved sharply, towards the Plaza, towards identity.

For three days, Sailor lurks and waits. Because it’s Fiesta, there’s not a hotel room to be found, so he sleeps where he can. He encounters the Senator and his entourage, with increasing levels of threat and intensity as he demands what’s due him. He discovers another Chicagoan in town – a boyhood acquaintance now police detective, also keeping an eye on the Senator. He forms a friendship of sorts with the man who operates the Tio Vivo – the children’s merry-go-round – whom he nicknames (of course) “Pancho.” There is, by the way, a lot of what we’d call offensive ethnic-related language in this book, but it’s all from the brain of Sailor, who uses language like that because that’s the way his character thinks.

Anyway, Pancho is one of a few characters Sailor encounters who hints at a different way. Another is a teenage girl whom he could easily exploit, but doesn’t, and whom, for reasons mysterious to even himself, he tries to help. It’s her storyline that provides the title – a title which has nothing to do with the dame on the cover of the reissue. What these characters do is show Sailor glimmers of life as it exists beyond greed and keeping score, either by the peace they’ve made with the limitations of their own lives:

‘Even with the gringo sonnama beetches,’ Pancho said cheerfully. ‘When I am young I do not understand how it is a man may love his enemies. But now I know better. I think they are poor peoples like I am. The gringo sonnama beetches don’t know no better. Poor peoples.’

….or the small acts of goodness they draw out of Sailor himself:

Sailor called to Pila. ‘Ride the pink one.’ He felt like a dope after saying it. What difference did it make to him what wooden horse an Indian kid rode? But the pink horse was the red bike in Field’s, the pink horse was the colored lights and the tink of music and the sweet, cold soda pop. The music cavorted. Pancho’s muscles bulged at the spindlass. Pila sat astride the pink horse, and Tio Vivo began its breath-taking whirl. Sailor leaned on the pickets. He didn’t know why giving her a ride had been important. Whether he’d wanted to play the big shot. Whether it was the kid and the bright new bike, the bum with his nose pressed against the window looking at the clean silver blonde beyond reach. Whether it was placating an old and nameless terror. Pila wasn’t stone now; she was a little girl, her stiff dark hair blowing behind her like the mane of the pink wooden horse.

Sailor was raised Catholic, by a pious mother and an alcoholic, abusing father. His mother spent her life praying – and how did it help her? In his view, it didn’t.

He hadn’t come here to pray; he’d come with a gun to keep his eye on a rat. He wasn’t going to be sucked in by holiness. He kept his mind and his backbone rigid when the golden censers swung the musk-scented smoke, when the organ and choir blazoned together the O Salutaris Hostia. He got on his knees only because everyone else did, because he didn’t want to be conspicuous…..Sailor slid over to the side pew. A pillar protected him from the eyes of those moving up the aisle. The old men and the little children. The rich and the poor. The alien and the native, the magnificent and the black shawls. The monks and the choir and the Sociedads, a slow-moving, silent procession to the open cathedral doors, out again into the night. Candles flickered like fireflies from all the vasty corners of the cathedral

Now and then, cultural commenters would worry about the appeal of antiheroes Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) and Walter White (Breaking Bad). What does it Say About Us? Well, what was most compelling to me -and I think to many – was not so much these characters’ dastardly deeds, but rather the possibility that they might turn around – both shows were full of such moments and opportunities, and decisions had to be made in those moments, decisions about whether to be really courageous or continue in your prideful, destructive, bastard ways.

Ride the Pink Horse has that same kind of vibe about it. Sailor didn’t have to be in the spot he’s in, and he still has a chance to move in another direction. Will he take it?

It’s a little repetitious – so not as strong as An Expendable Man, which is still my favorite Hughes so far. But it’s got a great setting, and in that pulp context, effectively examines the notion of conscience, creates a haunting spiritual landscape through which sinful strangers in a strange land choose one path – and not another – and wow, the ending is just smashing. I gasped. I did.

Well, that took longer than I expected. I’ll wait until tomorrow to write about the other book I read this weekend – They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell, published eighty years ago about events set twenty years earlier than that, but astonishingly fresh and deeply insightful.

Well, after several months of dipping, a day or two of immersion here and there and finally a stint of sustained reading, I have finished Harriet Martineau’s Retrospect of Western Travel. What a delight.

I had heard of the 19th century writer and early sociologist, but didn’t know much. Then I listened to the episode of In Our Timededicated to her and I was intrigued, mostly by the fact that she had taken an extended journey to the United States and written about it.

It’s too bad de Toqueville gets all the love, because Martineau offers just as much. Retrospect is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read, an astonishing first-hand view of the United States in its early history which includes encounters with most the most eminent personages of the age, from Andrew Jackson to Emerson, from the Beechers to Garrison.

And she goes everywhere. New England and the Middle Atlantic, all through the South from Charleston to New Orleans and up to Kentucky, and throughout the Midwest. She covers everything, from a close reading of the political system, to social morays to intellectual and religious life. Her impressions of slavery are particularly acute and impassioned.

I highlighted so much in reading that I can just skim the surface of sharing what interested me, so skim I shall. Different points will strike different readers. What interests me in writing of this kind are the moments in which I see the present in the past – in which Martineau notices aspects of American society that are still a part of our makeup, in which she happens upon quirks or incidents that might still be familiar to us today. I’m also interested in observations she make that confound our impressions of the past. Don’t look for rhyme or reason in these quotes. I’m just going through what I highlighted in volume 2 – most recently read – as the moments struck me:

At a school program in Cincinnati (a city, by the way, she believed should be nation’s capitol.)

Many prizes of books were given by the gentlemen on the platform; and the ceremony closed with an address from the pulpit which was true, and in some respects beautiful; but which did not appear altogether judicious to those who are familiar with children’s minds. The children were exhorted to trust their teachers entirely; to be assured that their friends would do by them what was kindest. Now, neither children nor grown people trust, any more than they believe, because they are bid. Telling them to have confidence is so much breath wasted. If they are properly trained, they will unavoidably have this trust and confidence, and the less that is said about it the better. If not, the less said the better, too; for confidence is then out of the question, and there is danger in making it an empty phrase. It would he well if those whose office it is to address children wore fully aware that exhortation, persuasion, and dissuasion are of no use in their case; and that there is immeasurable value in the opposite method of appeal. Make truth credible, and they will believe it: make goodness lovely, and they will love it: make holiness cheerful, and they will be glad in it: but remind them of themselves by threat, inducement, or exhortation, and you impair (if you do any thing) the force of their unconscious affections: try to put them upon a task of arbitrary self-management, and your words pass over their ears only to be forgotten.

(Her comments remind me of the present day in which we think if we just tell children and young people to have self-esteem and believe in themselves! ….it will happen…)

She often comments on the generosity of Americans:

This account of our three first clays at Cincinnati will convey a sufficient idea of a stranger’s impressions of the place. There is no need to give a report of its charitable institutions and its commerce: the details of the latter are well known to those whom they may concern; and in America, wherever men are gathered together, the helpless are aided, and the suffering relieved.

However, she notes as well the “illiberality” of many Americans – by which she means prejudices, and right after this passage, she comments on anti-Catholicism. (Martineau was a Unitarian, and no fan of Catholic practices, but she was also committed to freedom of religion and expression. Although she does infer that one of the reasons that prejudice is bad is that it might just prompt the growth and strength of the object of prejudice….)

The Catholic religion spreads rapidly in many most of the recently-settled parts of the United States, and its increase produces an almost insane dread among some Protestants, who fail to see that no evils that the Catholic religion can produce in the present state of society can be so afflictive and dangerous as the bigotry by which it is proposed to put it down. The removal to Cincinnati of Dr. Beecher, the ostentation and virulent foe of the Catholics, has much quickened the spirit of alarm in that region. It is to be hoped that Dr. Beecher and the people of Cincinnati will remember what has been the invariable consequence in America of public denunciations of assumed offences which the law does not reach; namely, mobbing.

To more prosaic topic – corn on the cob.

This day, I remember, we first tastedgreen corn, one of the most delicious of vegetables, and by somepreferred to green peas. The greatest drawback is the way in which it isnecessary to eat it. The cob, eight or ten inches long, is held at bothends, and, having been previously sprinkled with salt, is nibbled andsucked from end to end till all the grains are got out. It looks awkwardenough: but what is to be done? Surrendering such a vegetable fromconsiderations of grace is not to be thought of.

On New England education, class, and a contrast with Old England:

Their common and high schools, their lyceums and cheap colleges, are excitingand feeding thousands of minds, which in England would never get beyondthe loom or the ploughtail. If few are very learned in the villages ofMassachusetts, still fewer are very ignorant; and all have the power andthe will to invite the learning of the towns among them, and toremunerate its administration of knowledge. The consequence of this is astate of village society in which only vice and total ignorance needhang the head, while (out of the desolate range of religious bigotry)all honourable tastes are as sure of being countenanced and respected asall kindly feelings are of being reciprocated. I believe mostenlightened and virtuous residents in the villages of New-England areeager to acknowledge that the lines have fallen to them in pleasantplaces.

But she has harsh words for Harvard College:

The politics of the managers of Harvard University are opposed to thoseof the great body of the American people. She is the aristocraticcollege of the United States. Her pride of antiquity, her vanity ofpre-eminence and wealth, are likely to prevent her renovating herprinciples and management so as to suit the wants of the period; and shewill probably receive a sufficient patronage from the aristocracy, for aconsiderable time to come, to encourage her in all her faults. [Almost 200 years later…has anything changed??!] She has agreat name, and the education she affords is very expensive incomparison with all other colleges. The sons of the wealthy willtherefore flock to her. The attainments usually made within her wallsare inferior to those achieved elsewhere, her professors (poorlysalaried, when the expenses of living are considered) being accustomedto lecture and examine the students, and do nothing more. The indolentand the careless will therefore flock to her. But, meantime, more andmore new colleges are rising up, and are filled as fast as they rise,whose principles and practices are better suited to the wants of thetime. In them living is cheaper, and the professors are therefore richerwith the same or smaller salaries; the sons of the yeomanry and mechanicclasses resort to them; and, where it is the practice of the tutors towork with their pupils, as well as lecture to them, a proficiency ismade which shames the attainments of the Harvard students. The middleand lower classes are usually neither Unitarian nor Episcopalian, but“orthodox,” as their distinctive term is; and these, the strength andhope of the nation, avoid Harvard, and fill to overflowing the oldestorthodox colleges; and, when these will hold no more, establish newones.

When I was at Boston the state of the University was a subject of greatmourning among its friends.

Martineau was hard of hearing, and used an ear horn. She visited schools for the visually and hearing impaired in a few cities and observed:

The benevolence which undertook the care of this class of unfortunates,when their condition was esteemed hopeless, has, in many cases, througha very natural delight at its own success, passed over into a new andopposite error, particularly in America, where the popular philosophy ofmind comes in aid of the delusion. From fearing that the deaf and dumbhad hardly any capacities, too many of their friends have come tobelieve them a sort of sacred, favoured class, gifted with a keenerapprehension, a more subtile reason, and a purer spirituality thanothers, and shut out from little but what would defile and harden theirminds.

Martineau wrote extensively on what she saw in the slave-holding South, but also gives an interesting view of the impact of abolitionist activism in New England, and includes this very wise and still very true observation:

The same delusion (if it be mere delusion) isvisible here that is shared by all persons in power, who cannot denythat an evil exists, but have not courage to remove it; a vague hopethat “fate, or Providence, or something,” will do the work which men arecreated to perform; men of principle and men of peace, like theabolitionists; victims, not perpetrators of violence.

And what strikes her as one of America’s most telling features?

The only times when I felt disposed to quarrel with the inexhaustibleAmerican mirth was on the hottest days of summer. I liked it as well asever; but European strength will not stand more than an hour or two oflaughter in such seasons. I remember one day when the American part ofthe company was as much exhausted as the English. We had gone, a partyof six, to spend a long day with a merry household in a country village;and, to avoid the heat, had performed the journey of sixteen milesbefore ten o’clock. For three hours after our arrival the wit was infull flow; by which time we were all begging for mercy, for we couldlaugh no longer with any safety. Still, a little more fun was droppedall round, till we found that the only way was to separate, and we allturned out of doors. I cannot conceive how it is that so little has beenheard in England of the mirth of the Americans; for certainly nothing intheir manners struck and pleased me more. One of the rarest charactersamong them, and a great treasure to all his sportive neighbours, is aman who cannot take a joke.

Americans love their enthusiasms as well, and for Martineau, these enthusiasms, however nutty they might be, point to something deeper: an imaginative spirit.

When Spurzheim was in America, the great mass of society becamephrenologists in a day, wherever he appeared; and ever since itinerantlecturers have been reproducing the same sensation in a milder way, byretailing Spurzheimism, much deteriorated, in places where thephilosopher had not been. Meantime the light is always going out behindas fast as it blazes up round the steps of the lecturer. While the worldof Richmond and Charleston is working at a multiplication of the fifteencasts (the same fifteen or so) which every lecturer carries about, andall caps and wigs are pulled off, and all fair tresses dishevelled inthe search after organization, Boston has gone completely round to theopposite philosophy, and is raving about spiritualism to an excess whichcan scarcely be credited by any who have not heard the Unknown Tongues.If a phrenological lecturer from Paris, London, or Edinburgh should goto Boston, the superficial, visible portion of the public would wheelround once more, so rapidly and with so clamorous a welcome on theirtongues, that the transported lecturer would bless his stars which hadguided him over to a country whose inhabitants are so candid, soenlightened, so ravenous for truth. Before five years are out, however,the lecturer will find himself superseded by some professor of animalmagnetism, some preacher of homœopathy, some teacher who willundertake to analyze children, prove to them that their spirits madetheir bodies, and elicit from them truths fresh from heaven. All this isvery childish, very village-like; and it proves anything rather thanoriginality in the persons concerned. But it does not prove that thereis not originality in the bosom of a society whose superficial movementis of this kind; and it does not prove that national originality may notarise out of the very tendencies which indicate that it does not atpresent exist.

The Americans appear to me an eminently imaginative people. Theunprejudiced traveller can hardly spend a week among them without beingstruck with this every day. At a distance it is seen clearly enough thatthey do not put their imaginative power to use in literature and thearts; and it does certainly appear perverse enough to observers from theOld World that they should be imitative in fictions (whether of the pen,the pencil, stone, or marble), and imaginative in their science andphilosophy, applying their sober good sense to details, but beingsparing of it in regard to principles. This arbitrary direction of theirimaginative powers, or, rather, its restriction to particulardepartments, is, I believe and trust, only temporary. As their numbersincrease and their society becomes more delicately organized; when,consequently, the pursuit of literature, philosophy, and art shallbecome as definitely the business of some men as politics and commercenow are of others, I cannot doubt that the restraints of imitation willbe burst through, and that a plenitude of power will be shed into thesedepartments as striking as that which has made the organization ofAmerican commerce (notwithstanding some defects) the admiration of theworld, and vindicated the originality of American politics in theory andpractice.

Finally, she has an interesting section on “originals” in America:

There must be many local and professional oddities in a country likeAmerica, where individuals fill a larger space in society, and are lesspressed upon by influences, other than local and professional, than inOld World communities. A judge in the West is often a remarkablepersonage to European eyes…..

….Originals who are so in common circumstances, through their own force ofsoul, ruling events as well as being guided by them, yield something farbetter than amusement to the observer. Some of these, out of almostevery class, I saw in America, from the divine and statesman down to theslave.

Travel is so very strange. You spend weeks or even months anticipating the trip, and then it comes…and then it’s gone. Last week at this time, I felt as if I were in the midst of some epic trek and now…it’s over. And it’s been over for a week. And it feels as if it all happened a few years ago.

What with travel and my older son working in the evenings, we haven’t done much movie-watching recently, but we finally squeezed one in last night: Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, which provided some inspiration to George Lucas in the imagining of Star Wars.

It was mostly enjoyable, but of course not nearly the film that The Seven Samurai is. The acting was not quite as naturalistic, and in particular the female lead screeched her part, and I for one, was very grateful when I learned that the character would be feigning muteness as part of the plot. I do wonder if some of the exaggerated and mannered speech in the film is an expression of some Japanese theater tradition.

That said, the film had an effective and actually somewhat emotional climax – and Toshiro Mifune is always…. a pleasure to watch. That’s what she said…

My son has to read it for school, so I thought I’d take a shot at it, as well, never having read it before. (As with last summer – he had to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which I’d never read, and found absolutely fascinating.)

It’s not high literature, but it’s certainly effective – and it strikes me as a good segue into that junior year in which they are doing the later half of both American history and American literature.

And you know someone is a decent writer when he can render an immigrant family’s attempt to purchase a house in such a way that you can’t put the book down until you find out what happens….

Regular readers know of Casa Maria, the local convent and retreat center at which my sons often serve Mass. The foundress of the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word, Mother Mary Gabriel Long, passed away earlier this week. Here is her obituary – I had no idea she and Sister Assumpta Long, OP of the Dominicans in Ann Arbor, were actual sisters.

Today’s first reading does not begin with that exact phrase, but it could, for it’s the story of Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac, and the theft of his brother Esau’s birthright.

Once there were two brothers….

A few weeks ago, the third season of the FX series Fargo concluded. Fargo is a different kind of television series. It is “inspired by” the Coen brothers movie of that name, but takes from the film, not the exact plot, but rather setting, tone and general theme: The setting of the upper Midwest, the tone of black humor, and the general themes of randomness and of human beings using their free will for evil, but also in very stupid ways that always end in someone’s death.

Accident, serendipity and just the craziness of being in the wrong place at the wrong time play a huge role in this universe – as they do in life, in my opinion, which is why I am so strongly drawn to the series, I think.

That said, although I enjoyed the first season of the series, I never got around to watching the second – I think it coincided with a busy time of life, and then I never could catch up – but I did watch this recently concluded third season, and, in contrast to some viewers, who saw it as a definite downturn, I liked it a lot – and in ways thought it was stronger than the first season.

I’ll hasten to say that the seasons of this program are not intricately connected – the first and second were, but the third (I think) is a completely different story with different characters doing similar, but different things.

There’s too much going on for review in a single blog post – and you can certainly get that in other places. I suppose what I’ll do then, is just focus on what pulled me into this third season of Fargo. I won’t say, “And why you should watch it,” because people’s tastes vary so widely, I never assume that others will agree with my reading, listening or viewing preferences. And come to think of it, you probably shouldn’t watch it. There. Does that cover my bases?

Fargo was wild and arresting, but as with all wild and arresting creations out there these days, you have to be careful and ask: Is there a point to this, or is it just random visual flailing to get my attention and make me think there’s Something Serious going on here? That happens a lot – in my opinion, it happened in Twin Peaks (the original – didn’t watch the recent reboot or whatever) – and is pretty much the norm These Days, since the norm for quite a bit of artistic energy in the modern era is just about the startling superficial image, and not really about anything – since there’s no substantive Anything for anything to be about.

So with Fargo, I held my judgment until the end. I suspected it was about something real, but I couldn’t be sure if I was being taken for a ride or not until the end. And then the end came, and while it was the most deeply satisfying ending I could have envisioned, like the ending of The Sopranos – it fit. Fargo seemed to me about something real, after all.

And what was it?

It was about all those things I spoke of at the beginning, those matters which fascinate me so much – how we are in the place where we’re in at any given moment, not so much because of our deliberate choices (no matter how much we like to think that’s the reason), but because of chance, accidents and the good and evil that’s happened in the past.

But Fargo was also about the nature of truth – and how much of what surrounds us, and what we construct our lives around is just fable, myth and self-serving lies – but – BUT – truth does exist. There is a true story, and there are, indeed, still small voices in our midst, doggedly witnessing to that truth, usually at a great price.

Fargo begins and ends with interrogations of accused men by government officials.

(My discussion will be as spoiler-free as possible. So if I’m vague…that’s why.)

The first scene of the series us to East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A man has been hauled in for questioning. He protests his innocence and indeed maintains, with increasing panic, that he is not the man accused and there is no rational reason to suppose him to be.

The government official, cool and calm in his assertions, constructs a narrative, and the narrative is that the man in front of him is guilty. He is imposing a new identity on this man, and this narrative that he is a criminal is now the “truth.” It is now a true story.

The series ends in another small room, decades and half a world away from the first scene. Another government official sits behind a desk facing another accused man. Truth again is the issue, but this time, the dynamic is different. The official and the accused face each other, each maintaining the truth of their stories. Identity is again at the core, but now the roles are reversed. The accused has assumed identities in order to avoid detection of his criminal activities, and the official is maintaining, calmly and coolly, that she knows the truth of who he really is. She knows the true story.

There is only the faintest direct connection between the two scenes – one figure common to both narrative strands – who is, by the way, not physically present in either one. But this character’s existence serves to reinforce that other important Fargo theme of the role of random human connection in the course of life.

In between the two scenes are ten episodes in which characters are seduced by greed, deluded, killed, in which they face the truth and construct more lies, and most of the time face the consequences of their actions as the universe – bizarre and mysterious, but ultimately just, it seems – doles them out.

For the reason the events in that last scene came to the point that they did are this, in part:

Decades ago, someone traveled to Los Angeles with literary and filmmaking stars in their eyes, was exploited and mistreated, and bearing the physical consequences of this mistreatment, decided to leave it all behind, including his identity, and change his name to one he saw on a toilet bowl.

And

Decades ago, two brothers (ah…here we are) watched their father die. One brother knew the real value of the inheritance and tricked his brother into letting him have what was most valuable, traded for what the younger brother thought he wanted and needed at the moment, but was of little value beyond that immediate moment.

And here we are in this moment – dealing with the fallout and making our own present-day choices, carrying that weight.

Given that this is a crime drama, of course the choices are heightened and expressive of the most deadly sins – primarily greed and pride – always pride – here. And you watch along, filled with dread as characters you know have a glimmer of good in them insist on making decisions that range from the stupid to the short-sighted to just evil.

Along the way, Fargo gives us gorgeous cinematography, memorable images and intriguing metaphors – bridge plays a huge role, and along the way we dip into Peter and the Wolf, and find ourselves in a mystical bowling alley – a la Big Lebowski, but different – and excellent acting. Ewen McGregor plays both brothers, and while some critiqued his accent at times, I thought he was fabulous – the greatest challenge being when McGregor must play the brother Ray pretending to be his brother Emmitt.

The central character here, though, is really the villain – one mystery man V.M. Varga, played by David Thewlis, whom some of you might know from Harry Potter – he played Professor Lupin.

In Fargo, Varga is the man in charge of some sort of mysterious global entity that steps in to loan Emmit Stussy – the Parking Lot King of Minnesota – some money. The trouble begins when, seeking to repay the loan, Stussy discovers that he’s been had – that the money was not so much a loan as a buy-in to the company, and bit by bit, Varga and his people are taking control.

How sin begins: We open ourselves up to a bit of shadow, and find ourselves in its grasp.

Varga, played by Thewlis is mesmerizing and -yes – disgusting. The character is bulimic. He gorges himself with all manner of food, methodically and greedily, and then vomits it out. As a consequence, his teeth are rotting away – the work of stomach acid. Food is not nourishment here. It is something else, something to fill need both deep-seated and pressingly immediate, then to be vomited out.

Varga’s bulimia is echoed in his other actions, as he takes in more and more money, more and more property, and vomits it all out in the form of, first of all elaborate self-justifying tales of false history presented as fact, and secondly, human lives.

This character is, to me, an embodiment of the deadly sins, as he perverts what is good, ingests it, takes it all into himself, but for no purpose except for the consumption, discards it, spews out self-justifying lies, and ultimately rots away.

The villain in the first season of Fargo was named Malvo and was played by Billy Bob Thornton, who is always a pleasure to watch in anything, even when he’s playing a villain. Some critics prefer his villain to Varga, but to me, there’s no contest. Thornton was good, but there was an element of the plot and character that I found so unrealistic – even in the heightened, unrealistic world of Fargo – that I lost interest in him. (If you watched it – I’m talking about the dentist part). Varga was weird and lived on a level of exaggeration, to be sure, but there was, at times, fear in his eyes. He wasn’t invincible.

Which, lest you think this is all about the darkness, is the point. As is the case with every Fargo iteration, the beating heart of the series is a police officer – usually female – who is doggedly and patiently pursuing the truth and believes in justice. Here, she’s played by Carrie Coons (of HBO’s The Leftovers) and the character is certainly more than just a symbol of conscience. It’s her stepfather whose murder sets off another chain of events in the series, and although she is not onscreen as much as other characters, it’s clear she is subject to the same dynamics of the universe as they are: she is in the place she is in, both professionally and personally, because of weird, random things that happened in the past. What to make of it all? What’s the truth? And how do you live with it right now?

We like to think that life, as we’re living it, is the result of conscious choices that we and others have made. We read history this way, don’t’ we? We know how the story ends, so we read it as a narrative with decisions and steps leading up to that ending.

But it’s not that way. The way it is, instead, is a way of missteps and accidents, and while I can know some of it, most of it I won’t know. We do live in the midst of a narrative, but it’s not because there’s no True Narrative to be known – it’s because we’re too small, as God tells Job, to even begin to grasp it. But someday, we will. We cling to hope that we will, we try to find the True Story as we go, and try not to fabricate too many false narratives on the way.

That mystery and strangeness is at the heart of life, and it’s at the heart of the Scriptures – a messy narrative full of human weakness, a story of God working and ultimately victorious, not just through the saints and their great works, but even through the poor sinners and their weaknesses, crimes and lies.

“Are you really my son Esau?” “Certainly,” Jacob replied….

****

Note: I have a theory about the connection between the bowling alley and Nikki’s fate – but I’ll wait to discuss it in the comment section at some point.

In it, I talk about my struggles to write fiction. As it happens, last week I revisited a YA novel I wrote several years ago. I actually got an agent to represent it, and she sent it out to a lot of publishing houses – and of course it was rejected. There were decent comments that came out of the rejections, though, as well as the consistent claim that while the writing was good, they couldn’t sell it. Positioned as a YA novel, since it did not involve dystopia, vampires or shopping…there was no niche for it, I suppose.

I hadn’t looked at it in a long time, but last week, I found it on my old computer, rescued the file, and read through it. Hey, this isn’t terrible. So I think what I’m going to do is publish it on Amazon via CreateSpace. I have a bit of editing to do on it – to update some tech references and clean up some errors and weaker writing. I’ll do that after our trip to Guatemala and probably have it ready in August sometime.

It’s not perfect, but it never will be, and that’s okay. I think enough readers will find it and enjoy it to make the effort worthwhile. Which is the point of today’s entry, really.

And I am working on another couple of pieces of fiction, one short and one long – plus I’m probably going to have at least one more non-fiction book to work on over the course of the next year. I’m waiting on the details of that to be worked out. Which is another reason unschooling will be the preferred pedagogy for 7th grade….